Exceptions

ExceptionsmkTue, 03/30/2010 - 23:34

MAL comes with an exception handling mechanism, similar in style as found in modern programming languages. Exceptions are considered rare situations that alter the flow of control to a place where they can be handled. After the exceptional case has been handled the following options exist a) continue where it went wrong, b) retry the failed instruction, c) leave the block where the exception was handled, or d) pass the exception to an enclosing call. The current implementation of the MAL interpreter only supports c) and d).

Exception control

The exception handling keywords are: CATCH and RAISE The CATCH marks a point in the dataflow where an exception raised can be dealt with. Any statement between the point where it is raised and the catch block is ignored. Moreover, the CATCH ...EXIT block is ignored when no errors have occurred in the preceeding dataflow structure. Within the catch block, the exception variable can be manipulated without constraints.

An exception message is linked with a exception variable of type string. If this variable is defined in the receiving block, the exception message can be delivered. Otherwise, it implicitly raises the exception in the surrounding scope. The variable ANYexception can be used to catch them irrespective of their class.

After an exception has been dealt with, the catch block can be left at the normal exit.

Both LEAVE and REDO are conditional flow of control modifiers, which trigger on a non-empty string variable. An exception raised within a catch-block terminates the function and returns control to the enclosing environment.

The argument to the catch statement is a target list, which holds the exception variables you are interested in.

The snippet below illustrates how an exception raised in the function io.read is caught using the exception variable IOerror. After dealing with it locally, it raises a new exception FATALerror for the enclosing call.

Since CATCH is a flow control modifier it can be attached to any assignment statement. This statement is executed whenever there is no exception outstanding, but will be ignored when control is moved to the block otherwise.

Builtin exceptions

The policy implemented in the MAL modules, and recognized by the interpreter, is to return a string value by default. A NULL return value indicates succesful execution; otherwise the string encodes information to analyse the error occurred.

This string pattern is strictly formatted and easy to analyse. It starts with the name of the exception variable to be set, followed by an indication where the exception was raise, i.e. the function name and the program counter, and concludes with specific information needed to interpret and handle the exception.

For example, the exception string 'MALException:Admin.main[2]:address of function missing' denotes an exception raised while typechecking a MAL program.

The exceptions captured within the kernel are marked as 'GDKerror'. At that level there is no knowledge about the MAL context, which makes interpretation difficult for the average programmer. Exceptions in the MAL language layer are denoted by 'MALerror', and query language exceptiosn fall in their own class, e.g. 'SQLerror'. Exceptions can be cascaded to form a trail of exceptions recognized during the exection.